5 hacks to Increase Your Average Order Value

For online retailers, increasing your Average Order Value (AOV) can be quite the tedious, challenging affair, especially when your sales depend on specific top-selling products. If you’re aiming to increase your average order value without increasing product prices, check out the following easy to implement tactics that will bump up your AOV while simultaneously promoting a positive shopping experience.

*Tip: If you’re looking to calculate your AOV, use the following basic formula:

Sum of Revenue Generated/Number of Orders Taken = Average Order Value

1. Specify a minimum order amount for promotions

Humans are biologically and culturally wired to ensure they get the best bang for their buck. What better way to draw traffic to your store than with a limited time promotion or discount? Whether your promotion is in celebration of a particular holiday, special event, or just a run-of-the-mill weekly special, an advertised discount is an easy, fool-proof way to garner increased traffic and promote customer excitement.

When creating your promotion, be sure to set the minimum order amount to an appropriate value. If your AOV is $25, for example, try implementing a promotion that offers 20% off of orders $50 or more. Experiment and track your results; you may find yourself fine-tuning future promotions in response to sales reports and customer feedback.

2. Set a free shipping threshold

Consumers love getting something for nothing, and with the absurd cost many online retailers charge for shipping, advertised free shipping is a sure way to keep customers from not only abandoning checkout, but also an easy way to subtly push customers toward adding more products to their cart.

When determining your free shipping threshold, be sure to specify a reasonable amount that will appeal to the masses. If your AOV is $50 and only orders of $200+ qualify for free shipping, you’re probably not going to see a bump in your AOV. Remember, you only need to give a little to gain a lot.

3. Offer bulk discounts; Buy more, save more!

A simple, easy way to encourage customers to add more to their cart is to offer bulk (or quantity) discounts. Depending on your product catalog, you may notice that customers tend to buy multiples of specific products. Take advantage of this fact and provide your customers with an incentive to buy even more! Bulk discounts are easy to set up and encourage customers to buy, buy, buy, thanks to the mentality a penny saved is a penny earned.

4. Up-sell and cross-sell items

Offering product upgrades or suggesting complimentary accessories/peripherals is an excellent way to increase your average order value. Whether you’re looking to cross-sell a wallet that will go fabulously with the season’s latest handbag, or you’re offering microfiber cloths to clean that new big screen TV, up-selling and cross-selling urges customers to spend more than they sough out to. With careful planning and implementation, your customers won’t even mind that they’re spending the extra money – after all, you’re providing a product or service they need, and thanks to you, didn’t overlook in their rush to checkout.

Up-selling and cross-selling can be implemented on the product page and/or the checkout page. See what has the best effect on your customers.

5. Offer bundled products

If you offer products that can easily be sold together, try creating a convenient product bundle or kit that provides customers with everything they need for a quick shopping experience, thus alleviating the need to track down the individual items that make up the bundle. If you’re offering the bundle at a lower price than if the same products were purchased individually, feel free to advertise this fact on your store. Customers love saving money, even if it means checking out with some additional products they didn’t initially plan on purchasing.

You don’t need to implement all of these strategies at once to increase your AOV. In fact, we highly recommend you don’t! Experiment with these ideas, one at a time, and see which solutions provide you with the best customer feedback and overall improvement to AOV. Remember, your aim is to increase revenue – so make sure whichever course of action you take not only benefits your customers, but your wallet as well.